The Previous Owner
For the first few years that we lived at the beach my Father parked his car in front of the house. No biggy since Oyster Bay wasn’t prone to long Winters with deep snowpacks such as we see here in the East. But we did get nasty Souteasters that could tear the limbs off the big Douglas Firs and fire drift logs around like matchsticks.
At some point my Father had had enough of peeling branches off the car or running for the house in a deluge, and decided he wanted to build a carport on the end of the house.
Being, just a bit OCD (it runs in the family) he measured closely and strung out the exact area where he wanted the pillar footings dug and concrete poured. Then, things being what they were he handed a shovel to my brothers and together they began to dig.
Not long after they started, JL hit a rock with a ‘clunk’. He stopped to pick up the rock and toss it out of the foundation. Turning it over he was aghast to see that it wasn’t a rock at all, but a skull!
JL quickly took the skull to my Father digging in the far corner of the carport, “Look Dad!” JL said excitedly.
My Dad stopped and held the skull, then slowly turned around and looked towards the center of the carport yet undug. He just stood there for long minutes with deep thought running across his face. The he took his shovel and leaned it against the house.
For the rest of the day they dug carefully, pulling up bone after bone in the area JL had just started to dig. As each bone was unearthed it was placed on the picnic table, like a jigsaw puzzle slowly coming together one piece at a time. Eventually the entire skeleton lay on top of the table, minus a couple of small bones from one wrist.
We all stood back and oohed and awwed at the skeleton. To think we had run over that ground a zillion times, chasing croquet balls or playing under the big fir on the far side of the house.
Once done my Father went inside and phoned the provincial museum to report the find. The museum sent someone up I remember, who walked all around the picnic table with my Father, pointing out this detail and that. Then the fellow from the museum got in his car and drove away.
My Father just stood there, looking at the skeleton.
“He said it was a young woman, perhaps 20 or 25, been buried about 200 years.” my Father said to no-one in particular. “Native tribes here used to bury their dead in the lower branches of the fir trees,” he continued, pointing the fir tree at the far side of the carport, “the fellow thinks that she may have falled out of the tree after she was buried, and that’s why she was where she was.”, he pointed to where JL had found the skull.
“What we going to do with it?” Dode asked, “Are they taking it to the museum?”.
My Father shook his head, “They don’t want her, have enough skeletons at the museum. They suggested we bury her again.” I noticed for the first time my Father referring to the skeleton by her gender.
The skeleton lay on the picnic table for the rest of the day while my Father decided what to do with her. Finally, after dinner, he took a burlap potato sack, filled the bottom with rocks and gently place the bones on top, tying the bag tightly with a piece of twine.
With twilight approaching my Father rowed out into the bay with the potato sack sitting on the second seat. Then he sat for a few minutes, as though saying a prayer, and gently slid the bag over the side of the boat.
Not a word was spoken of the skeleton after that, my brothers and Father returning to digging the foundation the next day. In short order the cement truck came, the carport pad was poured and a new carport took shape, even a long washstand along the side for hanging up the many loads of laundry every week.
A few weeks ago I visited the house at the beach, and there stood the carport, a little worse for wear but still the well built structure after 60 years! But seeing the carport made me wonder what the story was of the young native woman, why she passed and how she ended up exactly where our carport was to be built.